Peter Drozda, business operations manager, American Orthodontics

“The efficiency factor was especially important to support our continued growth,” says Peter Drozda, business operations manager at American Orthodontics. “We are selling complex products to demanding customers, and we need to ensure that the right product is ordered for the right purpose, without having to review every order.”

AO Direct B2B launch

The company’s new AO Direct B2B ecommerce site, he adds, was designed to ensure accurate product configuration and pricing and ordering through multiple channels. The channels include self-service ecommerce, punchout applications that connect a customer’s procurement software with AO Direct, and electronic data interchange. In addition, AO Direct supports the manufacturer’s sales and customer service agents with tools to onboard new customers. It also assists them through the buying process.

“Our new site ensures these requirements are met whether the customer is served from the ecommerce solution, punch-out, or EDI,” Drozda says.

The new AO Direct ecommerce site runs on ecommerce and content management technology from Optimizely Inc. and integrates with the manufacturer’s Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. American Orthodontics retained digital agency Avensia to deploy the new ecommerce platform.

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Josh Fischer

In our rapidly changing digital economy, retailers and B2B ecommerce companies face many challenges, including maintaining inventory, intense online competition, and concerns with market uncertainty and rising inflation. Additionally, a leading challenge that is rarely discussed is employee recruitment, staffing, and retention.

Consider that 47 million people quit their jobs last year, resulting in a severe staffing shortage for businesses across industries. Nearly 60% of job openings in both the wholesale and retail sector and durable goods manufacturing were left unfilled, per data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The data showed the wholesale and retail industry also experienced a “quit rate” of 3.3% in 2022, while durable goods manufacturing saw 2.1%.

The labor market’s complexities have left business leaders seeking ways to maintain and improve their operations while dealing with reduced staff. After all, you can’t hire employees that don’t desire to fill open positions.

Fortunately for merchants, another option is available. Intelligent business management software and automated technologies are helping drive retail success, enabling more modern workflows and agile business operations.

How Automation Helps Merchants Navigate Labor Shortages

Businesses are leveraging automated technologies, such as cloud ERP solutions, helping them manage accounting, finances, and projects and navigate today’s market challenges. A survey commissioned by software company UiPath found that nearly 80% of responding companies affected by labor shortages will invest in automation to offset the lack of workers.

By automating processes, companies can do more with less. For instance, implementing automated processes can allow B2B manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers to streamline tasks such as product data entry, fulfilling customer orders, inventory synchronization, and returns management without making additional hires. Automating these workflows helps increase efficiency by eliminating error-prone manual methods.

In addition, business management software and cloud ERP solutions enhance collaboration across the organization. By implementing intelligent business management software, businesses can gather and sync data from every department into a centralized database that delivers real-time data. As a result, the business can streamline workflows, automate business processes, and integrate disparate systems. Ultimately, companies can enable their existing talent to boost efficiency.

While automation requires fewer associates, it empowers and fulfills the experience of existing employees by equipping them with better tools and information. In other words, it’s an investment in your existing talent. Providing them with better tools allows employees to have satisfying workplace and customer interactions, enhance their workplace experience, and boost morale.

However, to be effective, business management software must engage the frontline workers and be easy for employees to understand, especially given the current high pace of turnover. Simply put, you don’t want to spend too much time training employees to utilize a complex automated technology if the industry turnover rate indicates a limited span of engagement.

Adapt to the Changing Industry with a Business Management Platform

Not only are retail companies facing a complex labor market, but they’re also dealing with an ever-evolving industry.

We regularly hear the word “disruption” when discussing the many industries that have been impacted by new technology. But no industry has been impacted quite like retail and B2B commerce.

What used to be a brick-and-motor industry is now an online-first industry. Shoppers scour the internet for the best deals and prices. Buying online and picking up in-store has become so common it received its own acronym: BOPIS. This new norm has deviated far from the historic definition of “retail,” and it’s not unique to B2C retailers.

B2B companies are realizing their buyers want the same online experiences when buying business-oriented goods. They want online resources and product information, self-service purchasing tools, customer pricing, and personalized experiences. Not to mention the rapid adoption of B2B companies (especially manufacturers) selling direct-to-consumer (D2C).

Customers expect merchants to keep pace with these breakneck-speed changes. How is it possible for these merchants to grow when faced with so much chaos? The answer for merchants is multi-faceted, yet simple:

1. Create outstanding customer experiences throughout every form of engagement
2. Maximize the number of channels in which your products can be found
3. Build a community around your buyers and convert your customers into loyal fans
4. Optimize and automate your back-office tasks (e.g., customer engagement, order fulfillment, returns, inventory management, and timely replenishments)
5. Continue to recruit new buyers while you draw existing customers back for recurring purchases

Digital natives have led the charge in adopting and utilizing new tools such as Shopify and BigCommerce to elevate customer engagement and experiences. However, this new generation of commerce leaders don’t have experience in supply chain and inventory management. Rather, they are community builders who identify the products that their audience desires, then use modern tools to connect the two.

Often, smaller merchants begin by selling products out of their garage or spare bedroom; but as they build their customer base, they experience an increase in sales across a range of channels. As a result, merchants must determine how to organize their business in a way that enables them to scale and manage higher volumes of orders, transactions, and customers.

Enter a business management platform.

With a business management platform, merchants can organize, automate, and efficiently operate their back-office operations. More specifically, these systems balance back-office workflow management (e.g., inventory, accounting, order fulfillments, etc.) with front-office tasks like customer experience. Merchants gain a better understanding of the supply chain and distribution process through data and analytics, enabling them to reach more customers.

Retail and B2B commerce will continue to be redefined. In the coming years, we’ll see technology like VR and AR change digital and physical purchasing experiences. We’ll see AI guide buyers through their purchasing decisions for appliances and help them purchase replacement parts and supplies autonomously. We’ll see the metaverse change what we think of as “retail stores.” Due to the newfound commoditization of online shopping, in-person stores will likely transition into more experience-based locations and distribution centers littered with technology that knows who customers are and what they’re interested in purchasing.

Digital technologies and cloud-based business management solutions will help merchants evolve with the shifting landscape and empower employees with tools and information that enable efficiency. The forward-thinking merchants that dare to implement these technologies will drive commerce success now and in the future.

About the Author:

Josh Fischer is director of product management, retail-commerce, at Acumatica, a provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning technology. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Co-founders Wellson Tao and Joe Milot went on to invest in the newest glove manufacturing technology and expanded into additional personal protective equipment for industrial and residential use. By 2015, with Milot as the president and CEO,  steady growth — both organic and through acquisitions — took PIP past $200 million in annual sales of industrial and construction markets.

Today, with Milot still at the helm, the Latham, New York-based wholesale manufacturer — commonly known as PIP — is riding a new wave of growth sparked by digital commerce.

PIP’s new headquarters in Latham, New York.

From a new 60,000-square-foot headquarters launched in June at twice the size of the company’s former head office, PIP operates with more than 1,500 employees across 20 global locations. With about 1.5 million square feet of warehouse space, it supplies more than 5,000 products under such brands as Boss, G-Tek and Ironcat industrial work gloves and Bouton “stylish safety” eyeglasses to more than 4,000 customers ranging from Turner Construction to aerospace giant Boeing Co. PIP’s West Chester division sells PPE to retailers as well as garden gloves packaged and designed for pro-contractors and D-I-Y consumers.

As a portfolio company now of Odyssey Investment Partners, PIP doesn’t publicize its revenue but notes that its business has surged the past two years.

Engaging customers however they choose

Fortunately for PIP, the company had deployed new digital commerce technology in 2019 to help process customers’ orders, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic thrust its industry into overdrive as demand surged for safety products.

But the pandemic was not the sole impetus for the manufacturer’s growth and its improved connection with customers.

Sheila Schalk, vice president of industrial sales, PIP

In recent years PIP has blended ecommerce, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence, product information management, marketing automation and other technology applications to better understand customers and interact with them based on their needs. Many of PIP’s channel partners operate on common technology platforms that integrate with the manufacturer’s ERP, making it easier for customers to place electronic data interchange (EDI) orders and also access inventory information.

PIP’s growth strategy is built in large part on its ability to engage customers wherever and however they choose, the company says.

“A big pillar is to be easy to do business with,” says Sheila Schalk, vice president of industrial sales. The ability of customers to “purchase any time of day was critical to us,” she says.

A new B2B ecommerce portal

PIP’s digital properties are built around PIPGlobal.com, its umbrella site for information on the company and its products and services. PIPGlobal.com includes links to 11 websites in the local languages of markets in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Its visitors can get information on products available in their markets.

Anthony Di Giovanni, chief marketing officer, PIP

PIP does not sell direct to B2B end customers. For the United States, MyPIPUSA.com provides a self-service ordering portal — MyPIP.com — for PIP’s distributors. The portal runs on the Epicor Eclipse ecommerce platform, which integrates with PIP’s Epicor ERP system. MyPIP lets distributors place orders to satisfy the demand from their end customers. They can also check order status, and view and pay invoices. They can also preview full costs including freight.

Once an order is placed, “it can take as little as 15 minutes for pick, pack and ship,” says Anthony Di Giovanni, PIP’s chief marketing officer.

Outside of the MyPIP portal, end customers on PIPUSA.com can search among products. To place an order, they can use a rep-finder tool to locate and contact via email or phone the nearest PIP distributor sales reps. Distributors can also use the tool to get contact information for a PIP sales manager. PIPUSA.com also provides live chat and email contact with PIP customer service.

‘We want to adapt to our customers’

By offering a mix of self-service ecommerce and the option to place orders directly with sales reps and managers, PIP adheres to its policy of accommodating customers according to how they want to do business, Di Giovanni says.

“The goal is always that we want to adapt to our customers,” Di Giovanni says.  “We don’t want our customers to have to adapt to feel comfortable in how we use commerce technology.”

But PIP’s full suite of business software also enables the company to better serve customers in their chosen purchasing channel. That helps PIP to anticipate and respond to customers’ needs, the company says.

PIP processes about 30% of its orders electronically.

PIP processes about 30% of its customer orders electronically, including through self-service ecommerce, optical character recognition, and EDI. That level of electronic commerce, for one thing, helps PIP to maintain a high level of accuracy in order processing. With nearly all electronic orders going straight to a PIP warehouse, a recent tally found only 2% that needed personal attention to fix an order error, arrange for a back-order, or address some other issue, Di Giovanni says.

A crucial part of the integrated technology applications is PIP’s product information management system, or PIM. It ensures that the manufacturer’s product information is updated and accurate across all selling channels.

“The advantage of PIM is that it removes the critical need for all PIP global entities to be on the same ERP,” Schalk says. “PIM is the great equalizer.”

A strategic partner for distributors

The company also deploys business intelligence software along with complementary applications designed to help it better understand and service customers. Using a Revenue Intelligence suite of integrated CRM and business intelligence software from White Cup, PIP compiles and analyzes information on supply and customer demand to be more helpful to customers while also setting effective pricing strategies.

Like many companies, PIP has deployed a CRM system to modernize its sales team. Its taking its team from using paper notebooks to online electronic databases to manage customer accounts.

“We’ve taken CRM beyond that,”  Di Giovanni says. “We use CRM now as a tool to help gain insights into our business, uncover opportunities faster.”

As part of the White Cup suite, PIP’s CRM application integrates with the MITS BI business intelligence tool. The MITS tool compiles and analyzes customer data so PIP can provide a more helpful customer experience for PIP’s distributors and, in turn, the end customers those distributors sell to.

“That MITS tool has given us insights into our business, which allows us to ask better questions, make better decisions, and work faster for our customers  — and in many cases, tell them things about their business they didn’t know,” Di Giovanni says. “That really helps us be a strategic partner with distributors.”

Faster conversions of customer activity

The mix of CRM and business intelligence software also helps PIP move ahead more quickly on business opportunities.

“The business intelligence tools have allowed us to be two times more effective in converting customer meetings into opportunities,”  Schalk says.

For example, when a distributor asks in a meeting about past sales performance for a particular product category, PIP sales reps can immediately access that information online.

“We’re closing on those opportunities 75% faster than we were prior to having these business intelligence tools in place,” she adds.

To keep new business flowing into PIP, the company uses HubSpot marketing automation software to keep in touch with distributors and end customers. It entices them with the latest products and features helpful to the people who rely on PIP’s work gloves and other safety products in industrial settings, construction sites, and home gardens.

PIP’s mix of digital technology applications, Di Giovanni says, helps the wholesale manufacturer operate as a valuable partner to its distributors and, in turn, end customers.

“For us, it’s being able to use data in a way that allows us to continue to bring more value to our customers,” Di Giovanni says.

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George Anderson

It’s no secret that COVID disrupted the world of B2B ecommerce. Market trends and evolving customer expectations have pushed B2B vendors to transform faster than ever before.

In the realm of B2B ecommerce technology, we’re seeing several shifts in the market. Here are the top three trends that are defining new B2B ecommerce implementations.

1.—“Bolt-on” ERP integration isn’t working for manufacturers

Third-party-dependent integrations have never been great for organizations whose business lives in the ERP. If the company doesn’t have enough IT resources to dedicate to integration, data problems can arise—and ultimately, those become customer experience problems.

This trend is only intensifying as market pressures push companies to launch B2B ecommerce faster—and with all the integrations that customers need to complete transactions.

Conventional thinking said that a standalone platform was adequate for all organizations and all B2B use cases. If you needed ERP integration, you could choose from a wide range of third-party “connectors” to keep your ERP and your B2B ecommerce store in sync.

ERP-dependent organizations are finding this architecture unmanageable. It creates three duplicate systems (ERP, B2B ecommerce, and an integration solution), each with its own copy of all ERP data and logic. If business rules change in the ERP, you have to change them accordingly in the other two systems or synchronization will create errors.

Having three systems means you’ll need three separate teams. Whether you outsource that requirement or staff it in-house, it’s not cheap—and the chance of coordination problems is high. This is why we see an increasing demand for B2B ecommerce solutions that include real-time ERP integration.

2.—Integration-first platforms are empowering B2Bs to launch ecommerce fast

In the latest Wave Report for B2B Commerce, Forrester called out how integration-first platforms are disrupting the market.

“As monolithic technology becomes outdated and less effective, the providers that lead the pack demonstrate deep, prebuilt integrations and strong business user tooling.”

Given the pressures of the post-COVID world, it makes sense that the market would turn to alternative architectures for B2B ecommerce and ERP integration. And with customer-centric focus groups influencing the final shape of B2B ecommerce solutions, organizations are finding that they need ERP integration from the very start of the project. Without it, they can’t get realistic feedback from customers.

3.—Cloud is the way forward in B2B ecommerce

In the SAP market, we’re seeing an uptick in customers moving off of ECC 6.0 and onto S/4HANA. As economies continue to settle after COVID disruption, it appears that enterprises are at last beginning to migrate their ERPs to the cloud.

We’re seeing the same preference for cloud when it comes to B2B ecommerce. With rapid digital transformation now the norm, agile organizations can’t justify the intensive investment that’s required with on-premises or self-hosted solutions. And with today’s commoditized B2B ecommerce technology, it is generally easier to meet your needs with a SaaS solution than with a more traditional hosting model.

The old model for B2B ecommerce required vendors to arrange their own hosting, whether with hardware owned and maintained in-house, or through a hosting provider. While this model gave companies greater control over their solutions, it also put more responsibility on their shoulders.

With today’s fast-paced world of digital evolution, many organizations are finding they can’t pivot quickly enough with on-premise solutions. It’s a heavy lift for IT departments that are already scrambling in the wake of COVID disruption.

Whether it’s SaaS (software as a service) or PaaS (platform as a service), one thing is clear. Manufacturers and distributors need agile, scalable solutions for B2B ecommerce. That’s why they’re leveraging the economies of scale that only a cloud-hosted model can provide.

George Anderson is a marketing manager at Corevist Inc., which provides manufacturers with software to launch B2B ecommerce portals integrated with SAP ERP software. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn. A portion of this article first appeared on the Corevist blog. A portion of this article first appeared on the Corevist blog.

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George Anderson

When we talk about B2B ecommerce trends, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Strategy, technology, market trends—all these influence the decisions that are happening today in B2B ecommerce.

But what trends are emerging in customer experience? What’s getting priority in terms of customer-facing functionality—and what’s getting pushed to the back burner?

Here are five trends we’re seeing in B2B ecommerce customer experience.

1—In complex B2B scenarios, chatbots aren’t delivering if they aren’t manned by humans

While chatbots are a huge trend in B2B ecommerce, organizations are reevaluating their effectiveness. AI-driven chatbots are a great addition to B2C ecommerce, where customer questions (and answers) are fairly simple. But in B2B scenarios governed by complex, customer-specific ERP data and logic, unmanned chatbots may not be able to give customers the intelligence they need.

The key here is to ensure a real person (or team) is watching chatbot inquiries. While robotic responses can be helpful, there’s no guarantee that the chatbot is actually pointing your customer in the right direction (or answering with enough customer-specific intelligence to drive revenue).

2—Manufacturers are demanding customer personalization driven by ERP logic

If you look up B2B ecommerce trends, you’ll find a lot about personalization. Yet most B2B ecommerce platforms can’t deliver the personalization that customers actually need (at least, not without a complex ERP integration). The market talks about basic personalization like product recommendations and context-specific messages. And while these things are important, they’re not make-or-break for B2B ecommerce customers.

What personalization is essential?

Here’s what manufacturers’ customers are requesting.

• Real-time, personalized inventory availability;
• Personalized pricing governed by customer-specific ERP logic;
• Real-time, customer-specific credit status from the ERP displayed in B2B ecommerce;
• Real-time order simulation against ERP business rules (with intelligent error messaging returned to the user, to prevent order errors);
• Real-time order history and status for all orders logged in the ERP (not just those from B2B eCommerce);

While you can theoretically offer these personalization features with a non-integrated B2B platform (through third-party integration software), this architecture introduces unpredictable risk and cost when it’s supporting an integration of this complexity and depth. If any information gets out of sync, it creates a bad customer experience and drives up the cost of running your B2B ecommerce channel.

This is why we’re seeing an increasing preference for solutions that include built-in ERP integration.

3—Increasing demand for real-time inventory availability

While this B2B ecommerce trend fits neatly within the previous one, it’s worth calling this out on its own.

If you’re going to provide no other real-time ERP data in B2B ecommerce, you need accurate inventory quantities. And for ERP-dependent organizations, that means you need some form of real-time integration.

Manufacturers, in particular, are prioritizing this feature. With their customers needing certainty that they’ve claimed available stock when placing an order, manufacturers are finding that customers won’t use B2B ecommerce without inventory information.

Simply put, it’s too difficult for customers to tell if they’ll get what they need on time.

Which leads us to the next B2B trend.

4—Increasing customer demand for transparency around RDD (requested delivery dates)

We’re seeing this more and more with B2B ecommerce users. It’s not enough to know whether a product is in stock. Customers also need to know when their order will arrive.

For manufacturers whose entire business lives in the ERP, shipping time isn’t the only factor that determines this. The entire supply chain impacts the date when the order will arrive. With COVID disruptions still settling, some manufacturers are finding this impact larger than ever.

Hence the RDD (requested delivery date) logic that many organizations build out in their ERP. This calculation accounts for all factors that influence order arrival date—not only whether the material is in stock, but how quickly the supply chain can respond to demand that’s above stock levels.

As you can see, it’s a powerful calculation—and providing it in B2B ecommerce creates a great customer experience.

Without visibility into RDD in B2B ecommerce, customers will end up calling customer service to get answers. At scale, this takes a hands-free interaction (seamless order placement through B2B ecommerce) and turns it back into an expensive interaction (phone call, conversation, ERP check, callback, and order placement via phone or email, which requires another human intervention to rekey the order into the ERP).

The trends we’re seeing here are:

1) A preference for ERP-integrated solutions that can display RDD automatically, for every SKU, and

2) A willingness to clean up those RDD rules in the ERP if necessary (so they play nice in the B2B ecommerce solution).

5—Using B2B ecommerce to empower sales teams to provide customer-specific upselling/cross-selling recommendations

Here’s a creative trend in B2B ecommerce: using the solution as a portal for sales reps to recommend products to customers (and maybe even place orders on behalf of customers).

The key is a B2B ecommerce platform that maps each sales rep user to the customer accounts assigned to them in the ERP. This allows the sales rep to select a customer account from a drop-down, then see whatever unique product catalog you’ve defined for that customer in the ERP—including any related product rules.

This is a great way to leverage your ERP-defined product relationships for sales. B2B ecommerce is easier to use than an SAP GUI, or graphical user interface, (if you’re on SAP ERP) so it’s a no-brainer to make the portal available for reps in addition to customers.

In fact, we’ve even seen companies start with sales reps when they launch B2B ecommerce. With reps included in the project from the very beginning, you ensure the solution has their concerns baked in. This empowers them to be motivated evangelists who take B2B ecommerce to customers. It’s a brilliant strategy, and it’s working for real manufacturers.

George Anderson is a marketing manager at Corevist Inc., which provides manufacturers with software to launch B2B ecommerce portals integrated with SAP ERP software. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn. A portion of this article first appeared on the Corevist blog.

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George Anderson

If the year of the pandemic taught us one thing, it’s this: Expect disruption.

That’s been true in all areas of life, and we’ve definitely seen it in the world of B2B ecommerce. The trends that have emerged in the wake of the pandemic look a little different than the predictions of analysts and vendors c. 2019.

So where are things headed in B2B ecommerce? What trends matter for your business?

Here are the top eight trends we’re seeing driven by the market at large:

1. Manufacturers are rolling out B2B ecommerce to existing customers first.

While marketing materials on B2B ecommerce platforms tend to focus on reaching new customers, we don’t see this preference among manufacturers.

In fact, we see the opposite. Organizations are choosing an incremental approach, launching B2B ecommerce for existing customers first. Onboarding this captive audience of dedicated buyers can create a quick win—and it demonstrates the viability of B2B ecommerce to internal stakeholders. Organizations that choose a scalable solution (one with built-in ERP integration) are primed to grow their market footprint after transitioning existing business to B2B ecommerce.

2. Pressure is building to make the organization more efficient through B2B ecommerce.

There are three common drivers that push an organization to adopt B2B ecommerce.

• The need to improve customer experience
• The need to grow revenue
• The need to cut costs and become more efficient

Usually, all three drivers coexist at any given organization. Yet we’re seeing an increase in organizations looking to become more efficient—particularly manufacturers that still rely on phone, fax and email for order placement and order inquiry. (Incidentally, replacing those processes with B2B ecommerce not only increases efficiency—it also improves customer experience. But we digress!)

While global economies have already begun to recover from the impact of COVID, life is still very different in the B2B world. Reduced workforce availability and unusual lead times for order fulfillment have put more pressure than ever on B2B organizations. Any saving of cost or time in the OTC (order-to-cash) cycle is a welcome benefit, and B2B ecommerce is the primary driver of increased efficiency here.

3. The death of the non-integrated B2B proof of concept.

This B2B trend is directly related to the first. If you’re going to take an incremental approach, starting with existing customers, you need a solution that can actually meet their needs for real-time ERP data and logic. Without features like personalized pricing or real-time inventory and credit status in B2B ecommerce, existing customers won’t be able to do business with you.

Right away, that rules out the disconnected B2B ecommerce proof of concept. If existing customers can’t use it, it doesn’t really prove anything to them (or the organization). This problem is pushing organizations to get serious about ERP integration from the very beginning.

4. Everyone wants “quick win” customer portals that scale up to B2B ecommerce.

We saw this trend before the pandemic, but COVID intensified it.

Many organizations, particularly manufacturers, get nervous when they look at giant B2B ecommerce platforms and rollouts that take a year or more. They may dream of having that flashy catalog and all those merchandising capabilities, but if they can’t get their product content together—or they can’t imagine how their complex business processes will translate to a B2B ecommerce experience—then they have a hard time committing.

This is why manufacturers are starting their digital journeys with customer self-service portals. With an ERP-integrated solution, manufacturers can launch a portal for routine post-order care. This empowers existing customers to track orders, invoices and payments on their own—without calling customer service.

A successful portal gives manufacturers the cost savings (and the internal political capital) to get more ambitious with B2B ecommerce. The key is to choose a portal solution that 1) includes ERP integration, and 2) expands to full B2B ecommerce functionality on the same ERP-integrated architecture.

5. Marketplaces are forcing manufacturers to define their B2B ecommerce strategy.

Are online marketplaces friends or foes of manufacturers?

Actually, they’re both.

Online marketplaces offer incredible opportunities in B2B ecommerce. Yet they have no incentive to protect a manufacturer’s interests. Fundamentally, the interests of online marketplaces are not aligned with those of any one merchant. Their algorithms will suggest a different product if that’s what it takes to get the sale.

So what does this mean for manufacturers?

It means these organizations must define their B2B ecommerce strategies. That could mean a marketplace presence, or it could mean a privately owned B2B ecommerce store—or both. The answer depends on factors like how commoditized your products are and how much B2B ecommerce data you want to gather. (You can gather far more data from a privately-owned B2B ecommerce solution.)

6. Millennials are pushing organizations to deliver great B2B ecommerce experiences.

Millennials’ first priority in choosing vendors is the ease of doing business. This stands in contrast to Gen X (who prefer quality of service and products) and Baby Boomers (who prioritize getting things fast), according to an IBM report on Millennials and B2B marketing.

“Ease of doing business” means different things at different organizations. However, for manufacturers whose entire business lives in the ERP, it means one thing for sure. B2B ecommerce should provide the same personalized, real-time ERP data that millennials could get over the phone—because they’re not going to pick up the phone if they can help it.

7. After COVID, digital self-service is the new normal in B2B sales.

COVID pushed B2B sales away from human interaction and toward self-service. At the height of the pandemic, analysts were predicting that this shift would last permanently. Many organizations weren’t ready—and many are still grappling with the repercussions of not having a self-service digital channel.

But is the shift still in effect?

Absolutely. Check out this amazing set of interactive graphs from McKinsey & Company. No matter how you slice it, digital self-service is dominating the B2B buyer journey. That trend is pushing B2B organizations toward ecommerce and customer portals.

8. Mobile is growing fast, but it’s still a small segment of total B2B ecommerce traffic.

At this point, there’s no question you need a mobile-optimized experience (and no question that you can deliver one with any major platform). Any B2B ecommerce platform worth its salt should work great on mobile.

But how dominant is mobile, really?

Here’s what the data says for Corevist clients, who are primarily manufacturers running on SAP ERP. This data compares the period Jan. 1, 2020 – Aug. 25, 2021 to the previous period (May 8, 2018 – Dec. 31, 2019) for all Corevist clients in aggregate:

Here are the takeaways:

• Yes, mobile is growing fast, climbing 56.13% over the last three years.
• But mobile still accounts for a small fraction (3-5%) of all sessions on all Corevist Commerce storefronts.
• Desktop is still the dominant device for manufacturers’ customers, delivering 93% of all sessions on all Corevist Commerce storefronts.

The Takeaway

While the digital landscape continues to shift rapidly, there’s no more exciting time for organizations to explore B2B ecommerce. With diligent market research and deep understanding of customer needs, B2B companies can find new opportunities to win with ecommerce and customer portals.

George Anderson is a marketing manager at Corevist Inc., which provides manufacturers with software to launch B2B ecommerce portals integrated with SAP ERP software. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn. A portion of this article first appeared on the Corevist blog.

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Cyberweld.com is a $40 million online distributor of welding and safety equipment. Cyberweld operates its own fulfillment centers in New Jersey and Arizona and currently carries $2.5 million in on-hand inventory. The company handles an average of 400 orders per day with a total administrative, customer support and fulfillment staff of only 21 employees nationwide. After being an online business for more than 20 years, Goodliffe still personally manages the purchasing and webmaster functions for the organization.

Goodliffe is participating in the panel “Focus on Fulfillment: From the Distribution Center to the Doorstep, How Retailers are Delivering the Goods” at the May 20 online event, “Leading the Ecommerce Charge” hosted by Digital Commerce 360.

Bob Goodliffe, CEO, Cyberweld.com

Digital Commerce 360: What has been your main headache with fulfillment over the past year and how have you aimed to solve it?

Goodliffe: The main headache for fulfillment has been vendor delays in getting product to us. Initially, demand for COVID-19-related safety products emptied the pipeline. Government seizure of certain inventories didn’t help either. As the pandemic wore on, other product shortages began to show up across all channels. These were caused by diminished manufacturing workforce and freight capacities due to localized COVID-19 outbreaks, delays at the ports due to lack of workers, lack of containers and lack of freight carriers. All these factors have completely blown up our procurement processes and lead times. We have attempted to solve this by quickly pivoting to shorter buying cycles and larger purchase quantities. This has been met with limited success as lead times continue to lengthen.

Digital Commerce 360: Are there any technologies that have been especially helpful to aid you with fulfillment or supply chain management? What are they and how did they help?

Goodliffe: Our enterprise retail planning system is Retail Ops. We’ve been on this distribution platform for four-and-a-half years. It is extremely flexible with purchasing and changing warehouse conditions, so it has helped us stay flexible with such fluid conditions.

Digital Commerce 360: What is one tip you would offer retailers in regards to managing fulfillment in these chaotic times?

Goodliffe: In times of chaos, quality always wins. We exclusively use FedEx Corp. for incoming and outgoing freight shipments and have done so for over a decade. During COVID-19, when others could not get deliveries, we did. When Texas froze and some were without freight for weeks, we were one of the first to have our deliveries resumed. Those who fail to compute the real cost of shipping (freight costs, damage costs, return costs, delay costs, customer satisfaction costs) will fail.

Leading the 2021 Ecommerce Charge is the first of six livestreamed half-day events from Digital Commerce 360 this year. The event is designed to pack as much ecommerce analysis, data and revenue-generating ideas into four fast-paced hours as possible. This first-of-its-kind interactive experience will premiere on Thursday, May 20, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. CST and feature research and data not yet released to the public, tactical advice on how to better manage digital operations and ecommerce trend predictions. It also will incorporate the real-life experiences of retailers into each conversation. Attendees will learn new strategies to quickly and creatively drive revenue in 2021 and beyond.

Secure your spot and get a first look at our ecommerce research and data and leave with the tools you need to drive revenue and work smarter in 2021 and beyond. Learn More.

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2023 Omnichannel Report

Analysis of omnichannel trends in today’s evolving retail world. Includes over 25 charts, data on the Top U.S. retail chains, consumer survey results on omnichannel shopping habits, and new developments in the race to fulfill online orders.

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Bed Bath & Beyond (No. 58 in the 2020 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000) selected Oracle as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology provider. The retailer will use Oracle Cloud software to provide real-time financial, supply chain and merchandising data. Compared with Bed Bath & Beyond’s current technology systems, the Oracle technology will provide new data, insights and planning capabilities, the retailer says. The retailer says the new ERP technology will replace an existing “legacy suite of technology systems.” It did not offer specifics or name the vendors of its current technology.

ERP systems are suites of software used to manage numerous business functions, such as finance, merchandising, marketing and supply chain operations. The software ties the processes together, enabling managers to exchange data more easily. Such systems use a single, defined data structure that typically draws from a common database.

Bed Bath & Beyond’s tech roadmap

The three-year “technology road map” will significantly upgrade merchandising, product life cycle management, pricing and supply chain management systems, said John Hartmann, chief operating officer, during a Jan. 7 conference call with analysts.

“Outdated technology won’t get us to growth. This investment is critical because the capabilities we are adding will only accelerate our customer experiences, growth and efficiency,” Hartmann said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.

A Bed Bath & Beyond spokesman says the new ERP technology is a “foundational layer.” Putting that in place will allow the retailer to add capabilities over time, he said, without being specific. The spokesman declined to say how much the ERP technology will cost but called it a “substantial investment.”  

The technology will allow Bed Bath & Beyond to automate many of the data collection, utilization and analysis tasks it now does entirely or partially by hand. As an example, he said running product promotions in tandem with merchandise vendors will become easier.

The changes will have a more negligible effect on marketing-related systems. That’s because Bed Bath & Beyond already modernized its marketing with cloud-based software, he said. Hartmann also serves as president of Bed Bath & Beyond’s buybuy BABY unit.

‘The best chance of surviving and thriving’

Seth Basham, managing director for equity research at investment firm Wedbush Securities Inc., says Bed Bath & Beyond’s transformation is taking it in the right direction. He says the retailer understands the need to be more technology-centric and digital-first in its approach.

“I don’t think that  it’s too late for this for for this company to turn itself around,” he says. “We’ve seen some very good signs of improvement over the last couple quarters—and this with the company at a significant deficit as it relates to its technology capabilities.”

Putting the right software in place now will help the retailer advance further, he says. He added that the ERP is a critical component because it connects various aspects of the business. The company has been doing things like merchandising, inventory planning and promotional analysis using Excel spreadsheets for years. Having the ERP system in place, he says, “will completely change their ability to act more quickly and make smarter decisions.”

Bed Bath & Beyond’s turnaround does not have a 100% probability of success, Basham says. “But, I think that they are doing the right things and have the best chance of surviving and thriving with the choices that they are making today,” he adds.

Better inventory visibility

The ERP upgrade will provide better visibility of in-store inventory levels to employees and online shoppers, the spokesman says. It will also make it easier for the retailer to track backroom inventory and identify low stock levels by making the inventory information flow faster and more efficiently. He says the added awareness will help employees and shoppers determine what’s available for various omnichannel options. If, for example, a customer wants to order an item for curbside pickup or local delivery, she will get a more accurate information about availability in local stores. The result should be fewer orders cancelled or wrongfully rejected due to out-of-date inventory, he says. That, he says, should boost sales.

As part of its strategy to bolster its omnichannel capabilities, the retailer launched same-day delivery at its Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY units as of Sept. 29, 2020. Also, after re-opening some of its stores in the spring of 2020 that were closed due to coronavirus-related shutdowns, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. expanded curbside pickup to about 1,350 locations, an addition of about 600 stores, and roughly 97% of its stores. Its omnichannel services include ship from store, buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), curbside pickup and local delivery.

In its fiscal third quarter, which ended Nov. 28, 2020, Bed Bath & Beyond had 1,391 stores, including 951 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada. After rolling the service out in stages in 2020, virtually all those stores offer ship-from-store services, the company says.

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Nevertheless, the distributor’s revamped site unexpectedly opened up a thriving B2C channel.

Like many B2B suppliers, Lindemann found that it had outgrown its original B2B platform, which was a hodgepodge of systems from myriad vendors that had become too difficult to manage.

“It was a random mix of applications and it got to the point where we hit the breaking point,” recalls Michael Schaefer, director of operations for Lindemann Chimney Co. “We knew we had to upgrade and wanted a solution that could grow with our ecommerce business the next 5 to 10 years versus an ERP system that we’d probably outgrow in 2-3 years.”

After surveying the software market, the company settled on Oracle Corp.’s NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced platform. While Lindemann knew that a cloud-based platform could handle all of its customer-facing and back-end needs under one hood, which is what it wanted, SuiteCommerce Advanced was on the high-end of Lindemann’s price range.

“We were also on the low-end of customers in terms of size that NetSuite targets, so it was a pricey proposition for us,” Schaefer says.

But Lindemann decided to bite the bullet and invest in the new platform for the long-term.

Part of the company’s strategy in launching the new ecommerce site, at LindemannChimneySupply.com, was to make the user experience more intuitive by not requiring all buyers to log in to make a purchase. As a result, first-time buyers do not have to set up an account and can see retail prices for chimney caps, dampers, cleaning tools and other products. Quick ordering options and order-tracking features were also available to buyers that opted not to log-in. Existing B2B buyers, on the other hand, can see their discounted pricing by logging in to their account.

“Our intent was to create an ecommerce platform that is easy to navigate and provides fast, easy ordering for B2B buyers because the last thing chimney professionals want is to be talking to a supply house during business hours when they are on a roof working on or cleaning a chimney,” Schaefer says. “Chimney professionals prefer to order early in the morning or later in the evening when our call center staff is not available. Having a website that allows for fast, easy ordering 24/7 lets them place orders on their schedule.”

A sudden surge in direct-to-consumer sales

But a surprising thing happened after launching its new site, Lindemann found it was attracting a whole new customer base—do-it-yourselfers. Suddenly, the distributor had a new direct-to-consumer ecommerce channel that was undergoing explosive growth.

It wasn’t long before Lindemann, which sells primarily via ecommerce channels, had to add staff to manage its B2C channel, which now accounts for 20% of its ecommerce sales and has helped to generate more sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. The distributor also realized it needed to learn how to properly service consumers because their needs are different from those of B2B customers.

“One of the things we realized is that we had to be careful about the products we made available to our B2C customers because they are not chimney professionals,” says Schaefer. “They also ask a lot of technical questions, which raised concerns about how qualified they are to install and use some of the products we offer.”

Lindemann operates LindemannChimney.com, which links to the products site LindemannChimneySupply.com and a site for researching and scheduling residential chimney maintenance and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning services, LindemannChimneyService.com.

A Lindemann Chimney service crew.

LindemannChimneySupply.com sells products ranging from chimney parts and cleaning supplies to fireplace equipment and masonry repair materials. It caters to B2B commercial and wholesale customers who can log into their accounts and do-it-yourselfers who can make online purchases either with an account or by just entering their email address for order confirmation.

Lindemann’s customer service agents direct consumers on the product site with technical questions to The Chimney Safety Institute of America, which can also help consumers determine whether they need a professional to inspect their work.

Matching the UX of Amazon and Walmart.com

“Building a B2C business was never a strategy; it was simply a byproduct of launching a new site that is easier to navigate and provided a better user experience,” Schaefer says.

Lindemann, which also sells to consumers through Walmart.com and Amazom.com, discovered that B2C shoppers wanted the same kind of helpful digital user experience, or UX, those sites offer. That also made the distributor realize that offering the same kind of user experience on its B2C site—which is a public-facing site sharing the same platform as the log-in portal for B2B buyers—would make it a complementary sales channel to its core B2B business.

“The user experience doesn’t vary much between the two sites,” Schaefer says, noting that both are designed for such features as quick-ordering, order-tracking and access to customer service. “The biggest difference is that B2B users can log into their account portal to get the functionality they expect, such as the ability to reorder, see their discounted pricing and order history, and pay their bill.”

Balancing the pricing for B2C and B2B

Another difference between the two sites is that Lindemann makes sure to keep its retail prices high enough on its B2C site so as not to draw the ire of its B2B buyers, Schaefer adds.

With its B2C presence established, Lindemann is preparing to tweak the user experience on its B2C site to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Many of the lessons the distributor has learned about the user experience for B2C customers also apply to B2B buyers, such as more easily finding products and fast checkout.

“B2B and B2C buyers all want the same experience,” Schaefer says. “Interactions with both sets of customers also help us understand how to service them better through our ecommerce channel and what kinds of new products to add. We focus on our ecommerce channels as a whole, not as separate entities.”

Peter Lucas is a Highland Park, Illinois-based freelance journalist covering business and technology.  

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Leading providers of digital operations platforms, or DOPs, are addressing this need by “making their software smarter so that their customers can meet their customers’ demand for speed and choice, without sacrificing business imperatives such as profitability and working capital optimization,” Forrester says in a new report on digital operations platforms for distributors. (A sister report covers DOPs for manufacturers.)

Liz Herbert, vice president and principal analyst, Forrester Research

The report, “The Forrester Wave: Digital Operations Platforms for Distribution Businesses, Q3 2020,” by Liz Herbert, Duncan Jones and George Lawrie, among other Forrester analysts, reviews and scores eight providers of such technology platforms, listed here in alphabetical order: Epicor, IFS, Infor, Microsoft, Oracle, Oracle NetSuite, Sage and SAP.

Going beyond legacy ERPs

The report asserts that many legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for managing information on such things as customer activity and inventory stockpiles are “outdated and hampering business success.” It says that a new breed of digital operations platforms can provide new value through improved usage of data automation and artificial intelligence to help B2B companies better compete by more effectively recommending products and providing critical levels of service that meet the particular needs of customers.

Forrester says that companies considering the deployment of digital operations platforms should consider the ability of each DOP to do the following:

• Optimize product recommendations to resolve imbalances between customer demand and available inventory. “ERP usually requires human users to make tricky decisions, such as which customer should get scarce inventory that several customers want. Modern DOPs make more data visible to users to enable better-informed decisions.”
• Simplify integration with customers’ and suppliers’ other operational applications. “DOPs replace ERP’s inside-out focus and proprietary technologies with open architectures that support newer and still-emerging standards, such as microservices and containers, and welcome best-of-breed ecosystem partners. Great DOP choices provide out-of-box solutions for their specific industry—not merely a broad vertical, such as wholesale distribution, but granular micro-verticals, such as building materials or restaurant food.”
• Establish mutually successful, long-term strategic partnerships. “It’s very hard to replace a platform once you’ve implemented it, so you need to be confident that you can fully trust the vendor to treat you fairly commercially for as long as you remain a customer.”

Forrester has also released a similar report for manufacturers that reviews 13 DOP providers: Dassault Systemes, Epicor, IFS, Infor, Micorosoft, Oracle, Oracle NetSuite, Plex Systems, QAD, Ramco, Rootstock, Sage and SAP.

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact editor Paul Demery at paul@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

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